AMFest Barcelona • The Line-Up

Introducing the 13 bands of AMFest 2015

Aloud Music Festival (Nov. 5-6-7) is one of our favorite festivals. Not only because it’s in the great city of Barcelona but also because their line-up is pretty amazing every year. Like always we will be attending AMFest with our team.

The organization switched the festival timing from spring to fall and that results in a special year with two editions. This second edition of 2015 also has a lot of Spanish bands. Some of them are known, others are to be discovered. Next to the Spanish bands they welcome some great bands from other European countries and also from the USA. Here is a short introduction to the rather heavy line-up of AMFest2015.

The organization of AMFest is extremely enthusiast about having these guys from Belfast at their festival. And they should be! If you’ve seen them perform 10 times in the last two years like the AMFest crew did then you know why. They are the best instrumental band around at this time and guarantee a hell of a live show! Worthy headliner for this AMFest edition.
Their new album Heirs was released in May 2015 and throws at least the same amount of energy in your face as their previous ones. Of course we also hope they will play classics like Set Guitars to Kill.

Like many other bands on the line-up also based in Spain and the opening act of the festival. They only released their first album in July 2015 but Aloud tells us that their live-act is already famous in Barcelona. This is probably one of the most post-rock bands on the line-up using the classic ingredients, slowly building up to exploding climaxes that sometimes remind of This Will Destroy.

Never heard of before. So I checked it out on Spotify and it sounds very promising. Their album ‘The Moon Session’ was released in 2014. According to the Aloud website they toured Europe with this album but never played in Barcelona before. Perfect festival to fix that situation. By the way, Ciconia is the name of a kind of stork.

This duo from Los Angeles is not your average post rock dose. Their first album appeared in 2007. Their latest album Fast Forward was released in August 2015 and is already their 12th release and 6th full album. From the beginning they are mixing acoustic drums with electronic drums and use articulated guitar riffs and tappings. We are happy to have their European tour coming to Barcelona for AMFest.

According to the Aloud website this Spanish band will blow us away. Having listened to the guys online they have the potential to actually do that live. Heavy guitars with screams and vocals once a while in repetitive structured songs that go up to 13 minutes. I expect this show to be intense and immersive with those ingredients.

This band from Madrid will present their new album at AMFest. Already saw their name passing by a few times and this will be the perfect moment and place to learn to know them better. The evolution the made from their first album to their last release ‘187 Steps To Cross The Universe’ released in 2013 sounds very promising. Lots of guitars, lots of climaxes. Don’t miss out on this show!

This Madrid based band has released their first EP in November 2014. Their heavy post-rock music fits perfectly in the heavier line-up of AMFest 2015. There’s only three of them on stage. That mostly results in a more aggressive sound than the bigger post-rock bands that build up layer after layer.

Maamut, also from Spain can not be found online, no music nor information, so I don’t have a clue what to expect. Aloud tells us it’s a mix between experimental rock, psychedelia and kraut rock and that also their live show is amazing. I’m pretty curious about this one.

Maserati from Athens, USA is already around since 2000. Their new album ‘Rehumanizer’ is just out (Oct. 2015) and they are in Barcelona to present their new stuff. For this album they ‘fully embraced technology as a songwriting tool’. Expect a slightly different Maserati but with the same drive for adventure. They already convinced us at dunk!festival2013.

These guys from the UK don’t really need an introduction. They released several albums of which each and every one brought some absolute classics to the European post-rock scene. Their live shows will be remembered as being epic every single time. AMFest is one of your last chances to catch this experience live because they announced that this will be their very last tour as Maybeshewill.

We’ve heard lots of great things about this Luxemburg based band and they confirmed that at Arctangent in Bristol last August. I was actually standing right next Sergio watching their show. If he didn’t yet, this was definitely the moment he decided to book them for this years AMFest.
So much energy and noise! Perfect addition with ASIWYFA on the line-up.

Stearica from Italy rings a bell but I need to look that up again. They released their first album ‘Oltre’ in 2008 and their second album ‘Fertile’ only just now in spring 2015. That albums starts out pretty intense with a Groovy riff and some post-rock guitars. This is what I call heavy post-rock. The rest of the album also has some jazz influences and is not at all straight forward. I also expect this show to have a sufficient amount of energy on stage.

This Spanish band is kind of a special one in the line-up. Most of all because they have vocals. Which is rare but also good for the variation of the festival. This show will at least be appreciated because of the different style, being still heavy guitars but more structured songs focussed on the vocals. Besides the sound it will also be a nice variation in performance on stage with a frontman singer. Looking forward to this one.